


Bad decisions

by Melime



Category: Salvation (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Study, Friendship, Gen, Introspection, Season/Series 02
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-31
Updated: 2018-10-31
Packaged: 2019-08-08 01:42:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,261
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16420031
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Melime/pseuds/Melime
Summary: When RE/SYST took Liam, Darius knew they needed to find a way to get him back, but when Liam becomes a member of RE/SYST, Darius is willing to do anything to save him, even if that means making bad decisions that will only move them further apart.Or: why Darius decided to have Liam arrested and then risked everything to meet him as Aguirre.





	Bad decisions

**Author's Note:**

  * For [galbovka](https://archiveofourown.org/users/galbovka/gifts).
  * Translation into Português brasileiro available: [Decisões ruins](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19869463) by [Melime GreenLeaf (Melime)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Melime/pseuds/Melime%20GreenLeaf)



Darius could never have imagined how much his life would change because of that guy who came in late for his lecture wearing no shoes.

Now, after so many plans that failed, sabotages, losses, and giant leaps that would have been brilliant at any other moment but now were worth very little because they weren't the thing that would save humanity, it was impossible to even imagine how things would have worked if not for Liam’s breakthrough and his guts to show it to someone who could do something about it.

Except for the fact that either Darius wouldn't know of the situation until it was too late to do anything about it, or maybe the US government would have succeeded in one of their many “sacrifice billions of lives because it's the only idea we have” plans.

Darius was a big enough man to admit, although perhaps not aloud, and surely not to Liam, that without Liam humanity would have no hope of surviving. Of course, he wasn't the sole savior of humanity, but he was one of the key components of that delicate mechanism that was the group of people trying to save the planet and its inhabitants.

And now RE/SYST had stolen him, along with humanity’s best hope of survival.

Not because they had physically taken him, it was easy to get around that, if easy meant destroying Tess in the hopes of stopping a nuclear attack, that is. No, the problem was of a much more subtle nature, because they had stolen Liam’s mind, and perhaps also taken his heart in the process.

Darius should have suspected that this was going to happen. The environment created by RE/SYST seemed tailormade to seduce Liam, the perfect fantasy of a brilliant and idealist young scientist. A community of isolated scientists, working together to save humanity regardless of country or politics or money, it was all that Liam could ever have wanted, because he still had a kind enough heart to believe that this was genuine.

Of course in reality all the scientists there were terrified and felt threatened, and the only reason they were collaborating was because any refusal would mean death, possibly the destruction of their country of origin, and perhaps even the end of the world. Those were, of course, great motivators, but only if one didn’t mind using dread and coercion as motivators.

Reality was much different from Liam’s fantasy, but he was too focused on saving the planet to even see it, and if Darius had realized sooner what was happening, perhaps he could have rescued Liam before he decided to join a terrorist organization threatening to destroy the world with nuclear weapons.

From Liam’s point of view, RE/SYST was trying to save everyone and wasn’t actually keeping prisoners, just using some motivation to keep the best minds in the world working on the problem without the needless distractions of foreign and domestic power conflicts. After all, they did let him leave, and gave him all the resources to follow his sail plan. On the other hand, Darius was being distracted by a civil war, and his side might be the better one, but it was also the one risking the life of a supreme court justice just to get back in power, sending armed forces out on the street, and cutting the internet all around the country to keep civilians from organizing and spreading information.

It was no surprise that, after not being there to see how things unfolded to that point, Liam didn’t trust him anymore, and would rather go back to working with RE/SYST, where he could actually do something to save the planet.

And instead of taking the time to explain to Liam why things weren’t as they seemed to him, Darius had cut corners by having him arrested as a terrorist, which only made things worse.

From Darius’ point of view, it seemed like the perfect solution.

Any action taken against RE/SYST would likely result in harm to Liam as well, as the military and law enforcement agencies normally wouldn’t accept ‘he joined a terrorist organization, but just because he doesn’t really think they intend to do harm’ as an excuse. Allowing him to stay with RE/SYST was both a risk to Liam’s personal safety and any plans they may have to destroy those missiles.

However, a federal prison might not be the most comfortable place on Earth, but at least it was safe, and kept him out of the equation until they could deprogram him or something to that effect. And, of course, Darius was still the President of the United States, as absurd as that sounded, so once the threat was over he could simply issue an unconditional pardon to Liam.

If he had thought about this for any period of time, perhaps Darius would have realized that this would only feed into Liam’s idea that he had somehow turned into a dictator, but he had no time for careful planning, and thought that having him safe was the only thing that mattered at that point. Darius never had many friends, and never knew how to show that he cared in an acceptable way, but his only intention with that was to keep his best friend safe.

It took the more direct threat of a nuclear explosion in New York and the failure of his plan to stop RE/SYST to get him to stop and think about what he was doing, and how withholding information and refusing to talk to people wasn’t the best course of action.

Aguirre was a risky plan, and with a high chance of a failure accompanied by bullets, but it was the only way he could get close to Liam and talk to him after how angry he probably was because of the arrest. Also, Liam’s plan was good, and Darius wouldn’t hold back on the nanotechnology he needed just because he was working with RE/SYST, since unlike them, he would accept even the strangest bedfellows if only that meant Samson was stopped.

If he could get to Liam and apologize, maybe they could put this whole thing behind them and actually go back to the business of stopping that asteroid, and if he could get Liam back to his side, then the world wouldn’t need to worry about RE/SYST anymore.

All he had to do was to find a way of getting Liam alone despite pretending to be an old and reclusive Argentinian scientist that barely spoke any English and then explain the whole situation before Liam sounded any alarms and got RE/SYST to kill him. Surely that couldn’t be harder than stopping an extinction level event using technology that hadn’t been invented yet.

Liam had stopped trusting him, but Darius still knew that his heart was in the right place, and if made to see all the facts, Liam would make the right decision. Now, the fate of the world rested on Darius ability to bring Liam back from the rabbit role he had fell in.

Either Aguirre would be a success and they would have two working plans that in conjunction could be used to save the planet, as well as wouldn’t have to fear nuclear bombs anymore, or it would fail and Darius would most likely die along with most of the population of New York in the immediate future, and probably the rest of humanity in the coming weeks.

At least he was good at working under pressure.


End file.
